Science Fiction Studies

#3 = Volume 1, No. 3 = Spring 1974

Change, SF, and Marxism: Open or Closed Universes?

Robert Scholes. Novels by Brunner and Levin

Two recent, strong works of SF should be mentioned in relation to your
ongoing discussion of change and Marxism: Ira Levin's This Perfect Day (1970)
and John Brunner's The Sheep Look Up (1972).

Though it is the weaker of the two (and degenerates badly at the end),
Levin's book is interesting because it contemplates a specifically Marxist
"utopian" society ("Christ, Marx, Wood, and Wei / led us to this
perfect day.") and rejects it. In doing so, it follows a familiar path
traced by Zamyatin, Orwell, and Huxley, but its Marxian "utopia" is
more interesting than theirs in some ways, because it is more gently and kindly
perceived. It is by no means altogether horrible, though it makes clear the
price in lost individuality exacted by the perfection of its socioeconomic
arrangements. Beyond this, Levin's work surprised and pleased me by presenting
the capitalist island of freedom in the novel as a place at least as odious as
the socialist paradise.

Levin's criticism of capitalism as it functions on the island of
"liberty" is devastating, and might quite properly be called Marxist.
Thus his book criticizes socialism from the perspective of individualism, and
individualism from the perspective of socialism—and this is a genuine
achievement. If Levin has no final answer, this is because final answers are
very difficult to come by. And I should add that they are especially difficult
to come by in fictional form, for reasons that are very interesting in
themselves.

When a utopia is imagined concretely, as it must be in fictional form, the
price it exacts for its improvements in the human situation becomes clear. Thus
all utopias, however ideally intended, have something repellent about them, and
even the most generously conceived socialist or individualist utopia in
fictional form will reveal certain repellent features as the price for its
utopian qualities. This same principle applies with much greater force to
attempts to realize utopian dreams in actual societies. What is America today
but the fictional intentions of Jefferson and Hamilton, realized and shaped by
the interaction of social forces with individual men of power from Washington to
Nixon? And what is Russia but the similar ideals of Marx and Engels as enacted
by Lenin, Stalin, and others? Mr. H. Bruce Franklin has received treatment in
America which is shameful. (It makes me ashamed, anyway.) Others, like
Solzhenitsyn, have been treated at least as badly in Russia. Are we to blame
Jefferson and Marx for this? I think not. Both Jeffersonian democracy and
Marxian socialism are noble ideals which seem difficult to enact and sustain
even in fiction, let alone life.

In fiction, it seems clear, both socialistic and individualistic ideas
function better when used critically than when used for utopian projection. Thus
Marxism is most useful to writers of SF who aim at producing a critique of
capitalism, and individualism is most useful to writers criticizing socialism.
This presents a special problem for writers in socialist countries. If Marxism
is the reigning ideology, and if it is assumed to have largely succeeded, there
is not much critical maneuvering room for the writer. The problem can be seen in
a novel like Altov and Jouravleva's Ballad of theStars (which is
included in Bergier's anthology, Science-Fiction Soviétique, Paris
1972), where Marxist criticism can only be directed at the evil part of
humanity, since the revolution has been completed and the present admits of no
criticism. In short, I am ready to embrace Soviet and Polish SF, but I won't
expect it to present a Marxian critique aimed at changing contemporary Polish or
Soviet society, or a vision of the future socialist paradise which is either
fictionally satisfying or markedly different from contemporary life in a
socialist state.

In the West, on the other hand, the SF which is most effectively critical of
contemporary social structures is not purely Marxist but has adopted ecological
perspectives that have been developed since Marx produced his critique of
capitalism. Clifford Simak's A Choice of Gods (1972) is a case in point,
and so is John Brunner's extraordinary The Sheep Look Up. The latter is
as pure a piece of extrapolation as one could imagine, and it deals with the
pressing problems of the immediate future as powerfully as only fiction can. In
its criticism of capitalistic exploitation of man and nature it is as
thorough going as any work of literature could be. It is not Marxist in any
programmatic way, but suggests an ecological assimilation of certain Marxian
ideas. It is passionately concerned with change, however, and shows us how such
a concern can function in a richly structured fictional context. By giving us a
work of naturalism set in the near future, Brunner allows us finally to
contemplate the destruction his fictional America with a disturbing combination
of horror and satisfaction. And above all he inspires us to work, to change our
future, to avoid this nightmare he has painted for us in such vividly harrowing
detail. This is exactly the kind of future feedback we so desperately need right
now, and which only SF can give us.